Paulo Freire and a Manifesto for Disability Pedagogy

The Disabled Body

The body is a site loaded with ideological implications. It at once has the capacity for both docility and praxis. As ontologically incomplete beings, we must question the constitutive elements of our bodies. But, what is the body? Anatomically, it is the physical flesh and bone of a human being. But, philosophically, the construction of identity is reliant upon the signification of the body. In turn, any signifiers of difference inform our consciousness as an entity subject to molding, controlling, and dominating.

The relationship between the body and the mind is inextricably linked by the necessity to define standards of normality, establishing an order of being. The phenomenology of difference is racialized, sexualized, disabled, etc. Thus, in the creation of identity categories, society simultaneously creates “minority” identities. Our existential dilemma is located at the precise intersection of our internal and external realities, in society’s implicit desire to situate us in a hierarchical ordering of being. In the instant that the word “disability” is enunciated by the elite, non-disabled group which holds social capital--the constructors of normativity--the idea of difference (which implies an inherent inferiority), is reinforced and perpetuated.

This is the process of Othering, of objectifying and subjugating, a mechanism of oppression which alienates individuals from recognizing their bodily autonomy. I would like to borrow Michael Foucault’s concept of the “docile body” for this reason, wherein the disabled body is constantly coerced, supervised, and disciplined. To make a body pliable is to engage in the process of codifying prescriptive significations of our being. Power is inscribed upon us by the mythicization of wholeness. It is violently etched, slashed, cut, and cleaved into the consciousness of the oppressed. The application of this powerful ontological discipline is to immobilize the disabled body, preventing it from seeking processes of invention and reinvention which would naturally humanize us, thus undermining the authority of the oppressors.

Imagine the myth of wholeness as one aspect that is a part of a larger interconnected and interlocked system of dominant power structures. The relationship between myth and ideology is highly dialectical. Ideology is that which sets forth and propels myth, and in turn myth reinforces the strength of dominant ideologies. They are interconnected socio-cultural forces. For example, the myth of wholeness is born out of ableism. As the embodiment of the myth of superior bodily normativity, albeism is the center of this system, pushing its force outward in multiple directions which ripple through society and its systems. Ableism is fundamental to reinforcing the oppression of people with disabilities. Capitalism is deeply reliant upon the ableist myth of wholeness and normativity wherein your worth is derived from the value of what you produce and within what societal boundaries your production is created. If you are a wheelchair user, you are perceived as being less capable of physical tasks, and by extension, less employable. The wheelchair thus becomes a signifier for less skill, less capability, and less human value. In a capitalist framework, disability is defined by one’s perceived abilities to contribute to economic life.

Interlocked Structures of Oppression: Myth and Ideology

Three interlocked squares. At the center of these squares is "Ableism." The bottom two squares below it say "The Myth of Wholeness" and "The Myth of Normativity." The top box says "Capitalist Ideology."

Figure 1.0

The myth of wholeness is a way for capitalist ideology to lessen the value of the individual by reductively lessening the monetary value of their work simply by the virtue of their disability. This interaction between myth and ideology is manifested in the ways in which for decades, individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities have been exploited for manual labor in segregated employment, also known as sheltered workshops. On average, they are paid $52 dollars a week (see the Department of Justice’s case against Birch Vocational School). [For more information on the economic exploitation of people with disabilities, see video to the right.]

Similarly, the myth of wholeness is also reliant upon the myth of scientific objectivity generated by medical ideology, such as IQ tests, which are perceived as an unbiased, standardized measure of intelligence. Dr. Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who developed one of the first IQ tests in 1905. He believed that intelligence was fluid, subject to change over time, and shaped by environment and culture. However, his intentions were quickly distorted by an American psychologist, Henry Goddard, who altered how the test was used and believed it was a way to identify the “feebleminded” in society. Goddard’s IQ tests were incredibly instrumental in fueling the Eugenics Movement, which sought to use selective breeding, marriage restrictions, and sterilizations to eliminate the feebleminded from society (an ideal to be later carried out by Hitler’s Third Reich with the T4 program and the genocide of people with disabilities as “useless eaters” and “life of unworthy of life”).

If you score below a certain number on the test (typically 40), you are diagnosed with an intellectual or developmental disability. Because the test is believed to be objective, the authority of dominant ideology remains unquestioned. A perception of inferiority is imposed upon you. Because this imposition is dictated by science and medicine, it remains unquestioned and uncontested: we accept it as objective reality, despite it being purely subjective ideology. However, research even indicates today that the test can be biased, highly influenced by socio-economic status and cultural background. For example, African Americans are twice as likely to be diagnosed with an intellectual disability than white students. It is essential to recognize that capitalist ideology and medical ideology, like most dominant ideologies, interplay dialectically to produce a synthesis of myths which oppress people with disabilities. They are just so deeply embedded into the structure of our society that we are ignorant to our own coerced docility.

Freire says, “So often do [the oppressed] hear that they are good for nothing, know nothing and are incapable of learning anything--that they are sick, lazy, and unproductive--that in the end they become convinced of their own unfitness” (Freire PO ch. 1, par. 52). The myth of bodily wholeness may be more deeply understood, then, as the myth of the oppressor’s superiority. The docile body, convinced of its unfitness, is consequently ahistorical and dehumanized. As long as the disabled body is denied its critical consciousness by the oppressive mechanisms implicit in the myth of wholeness, then it will remain incomplete. Not physically or mentally in terms of capitalist and scientific productivity, but only insofar as the oppressors have lodged themselves within the being of the oppressed, the oppressed will not be able to become fully human. The duality of this application of power is the fragmentation of the disabled body, which can only liberate itself by rejecting the oppressor’s myth of wholeness embedded within them (Freire PO ch. 3, par. 18). To eject their authority, often manifested as internalized myths, expressed through stigmas and stereotypes, is to reclaim the body and all of its signifiers.

What are the signifiers of difference for the disabled body? These signifiers may be the use of a wheelchair, a service dog or guide dog, some physical traits that can manifest in an individual with Down Syndrome, etc. Some disabilities, however, are non-apparent. You cannot necessarily see that someone has a psychiatric disability like bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, or schizophrenia, nor can you necessarily tell if someone has a chronic illness like lupus, fibromyalgia, Crohn’s, endometriosis, POTS, etc. The same is true for learning disabilities like ADHD and dyslexia.

Although disability is an oppressed identity, there is often a socio-cultural schism between apparent and non-apparent disabilities, wherein non-apparent disabilities are less valid than our typical idea of what it means to disabled, such as being a wheelchair user. In the absence of any physical signifiers, the non-apparent disabled are oppressed two-fold: they live with impairments, like those with disabilities that have visual signifiers, and are thus discriminated against, but society rejects the validity of their minority status because they do not look disabled or they are not “disabled enough.” Subjected to a state of perpetual liminality, suspended between feelings of internal invalidity of identity and the external reality of their discriminatory experiences, those with non-apparent disabilities face complex conditions of oppression.

So far, we have considered the disabled body and its experience of oppression for both apparent and non-apparent disabilities. However, the disabled body, by nature, is highly intersectional. As previously stated, 1 in 4 people in the United States have some type of disability. Thus, disability is unavoidably a part of every single “minority” group, expansive across age, gender, sexual orientation, race, and nationality. Where disability intersects with other identities, “limit-situations”--structures of oppression--occur and overlap. When limit-situations are layered in the simultaneous occasion of multiple identities, the experience of oppression is at once heightened and intensified. When the black body is disabled, it is not just unproductive and less meaningful to society, but it now also seeks to exist parasitically off of welfare and harm the well-being of "hard working Americans." If this black body has a non-apparent disability, then they are perceived as all the more sinister. Thus, when oppressed identities intersect, there is a multiplication of existential complexities heavily implicated by ableist, racist, homophobic, classist, sexist, ageist, etc. ideology.

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